Sara Randazzo

Artistic Director

Sara’s rich and varied career in dance includes performing, choreographing, directing, producing, and teaching. She received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University while performing in the university dance company, local dance companies, and musical theater productions. Since graduating, Sara has continued training in Ballet, obtaining her Cecchetti teaching certificate for Grades I-III. She has also pursued extensive Jazz and Tap training in Chicago and in New York with many great teachers including Brenda Bufalino, Sam Weber, and Ed Kresley. Her Sole Full of Rhythm ensemble tours schools, performs at festivals and produces annual concerts giving student and professional dancers the opportunity to share the uniquely American art form of tap dance. Recently she has been hired to perform at the Ritz Carlton in Dearborn, MI and in Toronto at the Winchester Theater with Turn on the Tap. She has been commissioned to choreograph for Company Dance Traverse, Dance Arts of Chelsea and Performing Arts Dance Theater of Howell. Sara spent the 2002-2003 academic year developing a Movement Physical Education program in the Ypsilanti Schools. She is currently on the faculty of the Eastern Michigan University Department of Music and Dance, Dance Arts of Chelsea and Glenns’ School of Dance in Howell. IN addition to directing SFOR, Sara is co-director of Randazzo Dance where she coordinates the Jazz and Tap programs.

Rick Roe

Musical Director

Rick Roe is a renowned Jazz pianist. He is one of the world’s leading authorities and performers of the music of “Thelonious Sphere Monk. “Spere”, Rick’s most recent recording pays tribute to Monk and some of his lesser known compositions. An earlier recording, “Monks’s Modern Music”, has received international praise from jazz critics and jazz musicians including Wynton Marsalis. “The Changeover”, “The Late Late Show”, and “Bop Culture” feature Roe’s original compositions and arrangements and are recorded under his own lable, Unknown Records.

Rick has been a featured performer in music festivals across the country: Detroit International Jazz Festival, Savannah Onstage International Arts Festival, Hawaii Jazz Festival (with Frank Morgan), Lansing, Birmingham, and Flint Jazz Festivals, He toured Spain and Switzerland with the Paul Keller Orchestra.

As an educator/clinician he has taught at the University of Arizona, University of North Texas, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, University of Michigan, and the Detroit International Jazz Festival. He has taught summer jazz camps for young musicians in Detroit with the Professors of Jazz at Michigan State University.

Connie Jo Ferguson

Company Member

Connie Jo has been dancing most of her life. Originally, her interests were in studying ballet and modern jazz which began in a small town in northwest Michigan. After she moved to Ann Arbor in the mid 70s, she continued her dance studies and began teaching ballet and jazz at studios around the city. In 1978, she saw the Green Grass Cloggers at the Wheatland Music Festival and was instantly hooked on traditional old-time clogging and old-time string band music. Her interests in clogging lead her on the percussive dance path, studying English step dance, as well as Irish and French Canadian styles, and of course, Tap. For many years she taught tap at Dance Arts of Chelsea and jazz in Ann Arbor at the Cultural Arts Building. She continues her tap training by taking trips to study with some of the great teachers around the country. Currently, Connie teaches Tap/Clogging and Jazz for Randazzo Dance, and also assists in producing Sole Full of Rhythm performances.

Audrey Slough

Company Member, Board Member

Audrey Slough has been learning, performing, teaching, or choreographing for Randazzo Dance and its affiliate companies for the past 20 years. She began with ballet lessons at the age of four, but quickly expanded her scope to include tap, jazz, and contemporary dance. In addition to studying with the esteemed staff of Randazzo Dance, Audrey has received intensive training through summer programs with the Cecchetti Council of America, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Washington School of Ballet, and Boston Ballet. Audrey has worked as an Artistic Assistant for Randazzo Dance Company’s production of The Nutcracker, is currently a board and company member of Sole Full of Rhythm, and teaches Adult Ballet.
Audrey received her Bachelor’s from Kalamazoo College in Studio Art, where she focused on sculpture and performance art. Since graduating, Audrey has continued to broaden her understanding of and connection to dance. She has done this primarily by studying for her teacher’s certificates in the Cecchetti method under Laura McCarthy, along with her roles with Sole Full of Rhythm and Randazzo Dance Company. She takes great pride in sharing her love of dance and strives to foster passion for the art form within her students at Randazzo.

Griffen Walton

Company Member

At the early age of 9, Griffen Walton started tap dancing under the instruction of Sara Randazzo at Randazzo Dance Studio. At 12, he began to assist in teaching and at 16 took on a few classes of his own. He has been teaching ever since, and has developed an emphasis on rhythmic clarity, tonality and technique. He has traveled to New York City and Chicago to study under great huffers’ like Savion Glover, Jason Samuels Smith, Brenda Bufalino, Diane Walker, and Sam Weber.

Griffen has been affiliated with Randazzo Dance Studio, Soul Full Of Rhythm, NAACP’s ACT-SO, and EMU’s Dancers of David, U of M, and the Zone Dance Center of Southfield Mi. Tap Dancing is an artistic passion that he hopes to spread to his students, co-workers and audience.

Paula Skimin

Guest Performer

Paula Skimin is a multifaceted dancer, choreographer, adjudicator and educator trained in jazz, ballet and tap. She founded the Toronto based tap dance company Turn On The Tap in 1997. As artistic director Paula produced many productions featuring original scores, collaborating with various mediums fusing her art form and making her a progressive performance artist.

Her teaching has reached dancers throughout Canada and the US. She has worked as a Principal Artist with Learning Through The Arts, an education program associated with the Royal Conservatory of Music, spent ten years as a faculty member at Sheridan College in the Musical Theatre Program, with SERC a research centre for creative aging, and taught workshops at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education associated with the University of Toronto. Paula now lives in Vancouver BC and can currently be found teaching at The Rhythm Room.

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